Light sources are known for medical applications such as endoscopic viewing or surgery or illumination of headlamps worn by a surgeon or other medical operative on a headband. Such devices typically utilize a high intensity Xenon, halogen or other gas lamp which applies an intense light beam into an optical fiber cable through a turret assembly that allows selection of one of plural cables to receive the light. The cables transmit the light to utilization instrumentation. Losses are associated with the transmission via cable and through the instrumentation including transmission through endoscopic equipment, so that the provision of maximum light intensity of chromatically uniform spectral light is desirable. In medical applications, high reliability is also critical. In addition, such high intensity light sources have a relatively short life expectancy. This requires that surgical operations be backed up with spare supplies of light sources to fill in when a light source burns out during a procedure. This necessitates a large inventory of equipment, the more so because replacement of lamps requires return of the equipment to a factory or distributor setting where a new lamp can be installed and adjusted for proper alignment. Because the operating temperature of the lamp itself is high, the lamp tends to expand against its mounting restraints which raises a danger of breakage of such brittle components as sapphire lamp windows.
Because of the proliferation of medical equipment gathered around the limited space at a patient operating site, minimal dimensions for any instrumentation such as light sources becomes important. Such a trade-off is contrary to good heat dissipation principles in view of the substantial heat created in 150 and 300W lamps confined within small spaces.